


Sister, I am a Poet

by thequeenisdeadboys



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Sibling Reunion, The Smiths lyrics as epigraph in every chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 06:16:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11822919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeenisdeadboys/pseuds/thequeenisdeadboys
Summary: A story about how two half-siblings that never knew each other accidentally cross paths later in life. As lovely and corny as it can get.





	Sister, I am a Poet

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna put warnings regarding this chapter there: implied torture and a giant ant attacking a person and it's fatal. Ew.
> 
> Enjoy!

_Girl afraid_   
_Where do his intentions lay?_   
_Or does he even have any?_

 

  
The Courier watched helplessly as the man who captured her was going through her stuff. She had a misfortune to meet face to face with two legionaries whom she angered somehow, and they knocked her off. While she was unconscious they seem to have bound her and brought her… there. She had no idea where she was. This place looked like some one-room wooden house rotting of how old it was. It was tight and dark in there and full of suffocating, disgusting air that felt sour in her mouth. Behind the massive figure of her jailer her poor sight caught a lifeless body wearing something that looked like an NCR armor as far as she could tell. She was - superficially, but still was, - aware of what the Legion does to the NCR soldiers they capture, but she was by no means a soldier. What happens to her now?

‘What is it?’ A sudden question brought the woman back to reality from her thoughts. She narrowed her eyes and looked at something her jailer held between his thumb and index finger, something of round shape, that was shining as it caught the sunlight leaking through the boarded up window…

‘A chip,’ she said in quiet, careful voice. ‘Casino chip.’

‘Why do you carry a casino chip with you?’

It took her an effort to hold back all the possible smart and witty answers to this question. The effort was enormous, and jailer turned out to be short on patience.

‘Answer me.’ The tone of his voice made the Courier’s entire body shiver like a leaf on wind’s onset. This guy clearly won't praise her for messing around.

‘It's… it's a package… I was supposed to… deliver. I’m a courier.’ She whispered and felt a tight knot in her stomach as she realized she told about herself in past tense. Don't give up, there's still hope, she tried to keep her own self from falling apart. And as if in confirmation of this statement the laying body behind the Legionary emitted a prolonged, anguished moan. The Legionary paid no attention to the waking person.

‘Where were you supposed to deliver it?’ He continued on questioning his captive.

‘The Strip,’ the captive answered through her teeth.

‘How, the Strip itself?’

‘Why, the Strip’s gates,’ his meticulousness rose annoyance in the Courier. What does he care, this degenerate? ‘I ain't wealthy enough for the Strip, Mister.’

‘Well, wealth and this cushy little job of yours are your concerns no more,’ the Legionary announced like a radio DJ bringing news. He unzipped little purse on his waist and put the chip in there while the Courier was watching, all frozen with terror at once. He zipped the purse back and continued, ‘You will be taken with us to the Fort. From now on, you are Legion’s property. We decide your fate.’

‘Aw, c’mon, lad,’ the Courier said struggling with the tension of her jaw. ‘Let me go. I haven't done anything to you.’

Powerfully built, tall ‘lad’ glanced down at her, kneeling before him, with sore hands bound behind her back. Their eyes met, both almost exact same brown color, but his were tragically lacking warmth of that color. Dark brown hair was framing his face with big but goodly features, big nose, bushy brows of handsome shape above heavily lidded eyes, square jaw, long chin and suddenly small mouth with beautifully shaped rose colored lips, but with lowered corners, which gave him constant expression of sadness. It angered our Courier how _normal_ , if not good, her jailer looked. He was so decently tired as if his job was shepherding bighorners under the sun and not imprison and kill people.

‘You are a profligate, a woman who devoted her life to her own destruction and destruction of the land she walks upon. Your mere existence is a threat to the Legion, and so to myself.’

‘Huh?’

‘You’re the NCR,’ he put it lightly this time.

‘But I’m not a soldier.’

‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ He asked, without a sign of anger however. He bent over to reach the ground, where remains of her scanty inventory was resting, picked something and rose above her again, holding a thin little book in dark red cover in outstretched hand before him, so the Courier could see.

‘Do you know what this is?’ The Courier kept silence with her jaw tensed so hard, it started hurting. But the Legionary could not soothe. ‘Answer me. What's this?’

The Courier forced herself to unclench her teeth. ‘My passport.’

‘Your NCR passport,’ the Legionary added, stressing the NCR word. He turned the passport in his hands, so he could see the front, shabby picture of a two-headed bear and a word ‘passport’ above it in all capital letters but in a thin font. ‘You may not be a soldier, but you are… whatever you call yourself. A civilian? Still, you serve their rotten cause. People are the bricks that build the state.’

‘But I haven't done anything wrong,’ the Courier whined again. ‘I don't even live in the Republic anymore. I’m a Mojave Express employee for almost six years now. Please, let me go!’

‘You are pathetic. You only care about yourself, as the rest of these profligate troops. See how much your democracy means now? Your democracy means dick. All you people stand for means shit.’

‘And what I’m supposed to be, you lousy bastard?’ She cried. ‘I’m trapped here, and you're gonna kill me for your rotten cause. And ‘course you’re better than the NCR.’

‘’S a fitting end to a scum like you,’ he said boringly. Her angry rant meant to him no more than democracy. ‘But you are a strong, young woman. You’ll probably end up being a slave.’

The Trooper moved a little in their shadow and moaned again, even more loudly, and more pained than before. The Courier dropped her sight from the Legionary to them and felt like her entire skull starts to ache from tension of her jaw.

Their tormentor opened Courier’s passport. NCR passports usually contained two pages - the front one with the information on agency that gave the passport to a citizen, sealed with a two-headed bear stamp, and the second one with the basic information on passport’s owner. Pages with the information on marriage, children and military service were sewed in the passport as the things come. The Courier’s passport, as of woman with no family of her own and who never served the army, was accordingly thin.

The Legionary turned the passport to the light for better seeing. He studied the little portrait of a young woman in it, or a tomboyish looking girl rather - the passport was a bit aged. Its owner didn't change her style since then. Advanced, even. Short, clean-cut black hair, big forehead, thin brows and hooded eyes, flat nose, small chin, but square jaw and wide, sharp cheekbones. But perhaps the most notable feature of hers was a beauty mark above her bow shaped lips on the left side.

He looked down at the Courier again, at her sallow face, older, mature, living copy of the little black and white portrait featuring a girl that looked like a teenage boy.

‘It is you,’ he said. Our Courier looked at him and caught his sight again. His sad mouth bent into a grin, and the second after her entire body was curled in painful tension. She was about to start to groan like the poor thing in the shadow.

‘And your name is…’ The Legionary looked down the passport again, and smile on his face slowly disappeared. The Courier was watching, like a spellbound, how his face changed out of simple glance at her name. His expression was blank but there was a faint concentration hidden in his dim brown eyes, like he was trying to remember something… or to push away something he remembered suddenly.

‘Bruy,’ he said finally, heavily like he splitted the word. For some reason Courier Bruy got chills all over her head. It was the simplest name possible, but foreign and almost everyone she encountered made mistakes in its spelling. But in his lips it was clear like a shot, no pause between the first two letters, correct spelling of the U… and rolled R! May the thunder bolt her right there if there was a _hint_ this man could roll the R.

‘Yelena Bruy. That's your name, right?’ The Courier noticed that he rolled the R again, in ‘right’. She was so shaken with her discovery she forgot she had to answer.

‘Answer me.’ For the first time she felt anger in his voice. But magically the tension started leaving her pained body. She didn't feel afraid, of him at least.

‘I guess,’ she shrugged.

The Legionary closed the passport and slapped Yelena Bruy across her face with it, the blow leaving a red welt. He then threw the passport beneath her bended aching knees. Her cut bloody bow shaped lips bent into a smile, and she licked them. Her tongue felt bitter and salty. Hurt and humiliated, she felt so weirdly triumphant, as if she had stolen something from her tormentor and anticipated to his frustration when he finds out.

Light suddenly filled the place, illuming the Trooper’s body spreaded on the ground, eyes were the only living thing on his pale face with an agonized grimace. It was the Legionary opening the door as he was leaving. He shut it before Courier Bruy could see anything else. The place dived in hurtful dusk again.

 

*  
‘You're lucky that you’ll be a slave.’

‘Is that s’posed to make me feel better?’

Bruy, exhausted after many tries to lose her ties, spreaded on the ground, like her tortured fellow. That one just spent a few remaining powers in his body to pull this shit on her.

‘You’ll be alive and well, kept into the Fort. And I will be crucifixed.’

‘Yeah, whatever, _scram_ ,’ Bruy snapped at the Trooper. She wasn't exactly the empathic type, and these ‘woe is me, woe is you’ fellas made it even harder to be at least understanding type. She was also angered by the fact that there was a way to the rescue, which she was about to figure out but it was slipping out of her hands all the time. She sighed and tried to return to her last position. It wasn't easy with her bonds. She was agile but not strong, and her entire body hurt with every move. Getting back on kneeling position she sighed heavily.

She caught some disturbing noises outside with a corner of her ear. She frowned and her eyes flickered at the wall, and then her head tilt up to the boarded up window. It was the wall where the door, in which the Legionary disappeared was, and she assumed their camp was in this direction for some reason. She couldn't see anything and what she was hearing didn’t give her much hints.

‘Hey, you,’ she called the Trooper. ‘Do you hear that?’

The Trooper replied with some illegible noise, something between moaning, sighing and actually saying something. Bruy held herself from any sarcastic remarks as her pity was finally picking on her. She instead turned all ears and tensely trying to understand what's going on.

A battle. The battle was going on as the sounds of legionaries yelling, blades swinging and gunfire were caught by her sensitive ear. But faded, as they were quite far away. Where were they, and who were they fighting?

There was another noise she noticed but couldn't give a name. Something animalistic, predatory, something coming close to their prison.

The door got wide open and Bruy’s body started spinning again in whirlpool of terror and tension. A giant ant shoved its terrifying head inside. It's empty eye stared directly at Bruy, its antennas were slowly moving as well as its sharp mandibles. It was sensing the prey.

Finally it moved forward, to the poor Trooper laying before it. Bruy’s sight followed the beast, realization slowly reaching her brain, like Med-X in the bloodstream.

‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘No, no, no, NO!’ With every no her voice was raising more and more and her last cry mixed up with a plaintive yet terrified scream of the Trooper.

Bruy shut her eyes closed but image of a person being eaten alive arose before her again, like printed upon her eyelids. She couldn't cover her ears, and she couldn't scream, she heard everything, the splats of flesh splitting open, sounds of chewing that were making her feel nauseous, and _groans_. He was alive.

She was hoping her heart will stop beating before it's her turn.

What came next was so quick, her sensitive ear couldn't catch that. She had to open her eyes, and she saw the Legionary in full parade, with his mask hiding his entire face on and a helmet surrounded with feathers. She knew it was him even if she couldn't see his face. He cut the monster’s head off with his machete. It fell off and the body twitched convulsively a bit before shutting forever. He stood above dying man, whose body was gaping with open wounds, like he was in doubt and then bent over to reach him and slit his throat. All while Bruy watched.

The Legionary straightened up and turned his funny head to Bruy, but she didn’t laugh. She was crying, quietly, no weeping and whining, just tears tracing down her face. He approached her, and she bowed her head in submission. Her fate was in his hands.

He put his hand on Bruy’s head and pressed on it, bowing it even lower. He then grabbed her bound hands and tore the bounds up with his machete. The loose hands fell on the ground, and their owner hissed in pain.

‘What's the meaning of this?’ She asked trying to lift up on unruly hands. The Legionary pointed covered in blood machete at her. She instinctively leaned back.

‘Hush! Be quiet,’ He ordered. His voice sounded subdued with his mouth covered with scarf. ‘Be quiet until we leave. Then you can leave too, wherever you want to.’

‘Really?’ She asked incredulously. She was shaking tip to toe, and her hair was a mess. Her pretty upper lip cut open early from his slap was blown up, eyes puffy from tears.

‘Yes. And here,’ with habitual gesture he unzipped his waist purse, took the casino chip - platinum chip, and gave it to the Courier. She looked down at it as if the chip was unrecognizable to her. He took her hand and placed it in her cold, wet palm. And she kept staring at it with a confused expression, uncertain why would he handed it to her.

‘It's yours,’ he said as if he understood her confusion. ‘Take it.’

She tilt her head up and looked directly at where his eyes hidden behind tanned goggles were supposed to be.

‘Why are you doing this?’ She asked.

‘Would you like to become a slave instead?’

‘Fine, fine, asshole,’ Bruy squeezed platinum chip in her weak fist. Even if it was intended to be sarcastic she was genuinely afraid he’ll change his mind and take it away. ‘Just one thing…’

‘Be quick.’

Still looking through his googles’ tan, Bruy held her fist with chip close to her chest, exactly where heart is.

‘Tell me your name.’

 

*  
‘All clean, Decanus Georgis,’ a recruit reported through a heavy breath. ‘The bastards are all dead.’

‘Very well.’ Decanus nodded. ‘Have we lost anyone?’

‘No.’

Decanus Georgis reached a hand and patted recruit’s shoulder. It was not an affectionate gesture but automatic, he just needed to touch someone.

‘Very well,’ he said.

‘What to the profligates, Ser?’ Recruit asked shifting his eyes from Decanus’ hand on his shoulder to his face hidden behind the mask, cautioned.

‘Dead,’ Decanus said on exhale. ‘Both.’ He sighted down at the recruit, unclenched his shoulder and added in low, distinctive tone, ‘A fitting end to a scum like this.’

Recruit nodded, swallowing hard.


End file.
